Cherries are curious things
by Daevlin
Summary: I don't want to be obvious but it's a hunt, so it's a "basic boys OC vs Monster."
1. As if spilled coffee wasn't bad enough

**So I'll give you a fair warning: it's my first fic, but don't let that stop you from reading anyway. All constructive comments are hugely appreciated, like, a LOT. So if it isn't to much to ask, please leave some comments. I might ad that it is already completely written (even though the chapters are far from having the same size), in other words no quitting for my part. A huge thanks to InsertImaginativeNameHere who did the proofreading, without her you would literary have a mental break-down because of all the errors. Well I can't say much more besides hop in and enjoy the ride.**

 **Oh wait. Actually if one of you guys knows how to put frigging blank spaces please do tell me 'cause it's driving me insane.**

Now consider this beverage: crushed coffee beans, milk, and a ridiculous amount of sugar. Picture that in contradiction to human customs, it is not neatly contained in a medium sized carton cup but instead spilled over a clean skin-tight khaki t-shirt. We could add that the said clothing wasn't stowed away in some closet, but worn by a dark brown haired girl in her early twenties staring in shock at her unfortunate aggressor.

Congratulations, you now have the best recollection of Sam's late afternoon stop at the local coffee shop.

The lady's pained scream made Dean's sprint for ice-packs that much quicker, leaving Sam awkwardly by the side of said girl repeating mumbled apologies. The girl, like any other decent human being in these circumstances, interweaved her groans with seethed curses each one more inventive than the other. As the pain begun to subside, her litany of swearing slowly ceased due to lack of vocabulary, instead morphing into a hissed "Help me up," through clenched teeth.

Without a second thought Sam obeyed. With a mighty tug which thankfully didn't jerk her arm off, he lifted her to her feet, careful to avoid her furious eyes. Dean, who had finally come back, offered the ice pack, but the girl didn't react at all, instead seemingly looking through him.

A thick crimson stream of blood began leaking from the lady's nose, tracing its path across her thin lips to drip from her chin onto the floor. Her mildly dark-circled eyes were red, puffed, tears barely held back, which made them reflect the neon light in a strange manner, as if little strings of yellow stained her dark green eyes.

"Hey hey hey, I know it hurts," The words made Sam's head snap up; his brother beginning to be serious in this sort of situation meant that here was something more at stake than just spilled coffee. "But it was just coffee right? Except a nasty burn it's gonna be alright, eh?"

The vacant dark green eyes seemed to finally acknowledge Dean's presence. Abruptly the girl jerked herself out of Dean's grasp, leaped towards Sam, and snatched the ice pack and towel out of his hands. Because yes, for grasping someone's shoulders you have to have empty hands, and dropping everything on the floor is not an option. Giving it to your shocked little baby brother is though.

She settled her intense gaze on Sam, and for a moment - it was just a flicker - but he thought he had seen heart-crushing condolences in those green irises. In the flicker of an eyelash the look reverted back to cold hatred; with a steely tone that implied that a negative response would equal a long and agonizing death she stated, "You owe me 2.70 bucks."

Sam would have laughed if he wasn't the one in the situation, but seeing renewed anger flare in the girl's eyes, he took his leather wallet out of his jeans and gave the asked sum without a word. The girl took the money, directly bought another medium sized black coffee, and left.

Every, _every single_ pair of eyes were boring their way into the backs of the two siblings.

Dean slapped Sam's shoulder in an exaggerated brotherly way and leaning in he whispered "Now say you're sorry one more time to be sure everyone heard and let's leave."

Here they were then. Back in the only hotel of a town so cut off from the rest of the world even hermits would qualify it as extremely isolated. Sam was sitting; slumped would have been a better word, on the corner of his bed, shoes off and with only one layer of clothing. Even without a sixth sense he knew that the stupid grin Dean had adopted when they had left the shop was still plastered his face.

And of course Sam was right: when he decided that the constant weight of that look was getting on his (at this moment) rather sensitive nerves, he was greeted with the happiest smirk in all history.

"I swear that if you look at me one more second with that look on your face I will summon hellhounds to grace you with a facial chirurgical operation." Sam spat through gritted teeth. Absolutely not taken aback and satisfied with the thought that the event was forever seared into his brother's brain, Dean tried, and failed, to sober up.

Opting for a change of topic instead, he asked "So why are we in this godforsaken town again?"

Sam irritably passed a hand over his face and flopped down on his mattress "Three so-called suicides by jumping off the bridge into the water."

"Yeah, and what does that have to do with us?"

"The bodies were never discovered."

"Woo, spooky."

"Well, guess what." Sam hissed, glaring at his brother, gradually losing more and more of his infamous calm as a little headache blossomed in the back of his head. "There's one eye witness from the last "suicide", she saw the man jump, but the body never came streaming by or something, same for the other victims."

"Okay you got me there, and what's the witness pretty name?"

Sam vaguely motioned at the computer, more concerned in tucking himself into his rough sheets than remembering the woman's name.

"And the plan is to hear her out tomorrow I guess?"

"Nice guess, Sherlock," Sam half-mumbled into his feathery pillow before inevitably falling asleep, leaving Dean and his chattering well alone.

oOo

She frigging _hated_ coffee. It tasted bitter even with hundreds packs of sugar. On top of that, she would get that horrible coffee breath making every plant in a two meter radius wilt instantly. _But,_ she bitterly admitted, it kept her awake: falling asleep at such a time was really not an option, _so,_ she poured herself a mug of the foul thing, - _coffee, that is._ It was about 11 a.m, they would poke their pretty heads around the corner soon enough… and to no one's surprise, the doorbell rang.

"Hello we're from the FBI and we would…" Sam's face dropped simultaneously as Dean's and the lady's brightened up in the most flagrant of ways. Short unruly chocolate hair, forest green eyes underlined by poorly masked bags: it was the spilled coffee lady.

"Well hello there, Mr. Agent from the FBI, if you would please bother to wipe those stupid looks from your respective faces, you may eventually come in."

So they did.

The interior of the house was a mess, but a clean mess nonetheless, not a grain of dust in sight. The woman invited them to sit at what Dean guessed was the dining table, but wise was the man capable of discerning anything under the pile of newspapers, drawings, and just random… _things…_

"So, Winchester boys." The girl begun sipping her coffee with visible reluctance and disgust.

Seeing the way she had greeted them at the entrance they had figured out that the chances she knew something about them was absurdly high, but their names… someone knowing their names had always been indicative of trouble to come. Now the main goal was to know from where it would arrive from. Sam instinctively felt for his gun, carefully pressing the hard metal against his skin. If matters turned to the worst it would be a two versus one match _._

"Can you tell me exactly what the hell of a kind of creature amuses itself by helping other people to, primo: drown themselves; secondo: erase them from surface of this earth?" She asked, the fiddling with her sleeves contrasting with the hint of dark humor in her voice.

"We've got no lead whatsoever," Dean said, shifting in his chair. On second glance those papers didn't seem as useless as he had thought. "That's why we're here."

Sam had come to the same conclusion "So if you have any useful information, or maybe know the friends or families of the deceased..?"

The girl instantly started foraging in the paper sea with a mad glint in her eyes, making the coffee mug sway dangerously with every sheet she pulled out. For a moment the paper rustling was all that could be heard.

"Shit," she breathed, breaking the relative silence. "Can't-" Folios were now flying all over the room "-find th— HA!" She triumphantly held three rustled pages. As she saw the brothers' almost frightened look, she collected herself again. "Those are part of the police records about the three suicides."

The Winchesters let their gaze rapidly fly over the records, not even bothering to ask themselves how she had obtained such papers.

"The police made no connection between the suicides?" Dean asked, frowning "Even though it was at the exact same spot?" The girl made an approving noise.

"And their behavior before the suicide is described in the exact same way." Sam half-mumbled as if talking to himself. "Ever tired, scared of every small noise, panic attacks."

"Not exactly what you would call typical symptoms of depression." Dean huffed leaning back again.

The girl's toying came back, but her voice was still as steady as could be. "Even the townspeople are calling it murders, the profiles of the victims just don't match with self-destruction. Take Mrs. Gordon for example: had everything to make her happy, nice family, good running business (the bakery if you must know), a cozy house… She was even telling me how she would go on vacation to Canada next month. "

"So, at first sight, no reason whatsoever to commit suicide." Dean sighed "And I guess that the other victims were the same 'no rainclouds on the horizon' types?" The girl approved again.

"When you were at the river, noticed anything strange?" Sam redirected the conversation as he mentally searched through the possible freaks it could be.

"Besides a suicide and a missing body?" _Now don't let them know you're scared_. "I went to search for the man. Coming to a certain point I saw footprints and started following them. But then, poof!" She gestured as if something had vanished into thin air and Dean wondered how long the mug would survive in this household. "Nothing. Like there had never been a trail to follow."

The last sentence hung in the air, the three improvised detectives rummaging the statement in different ways. A creature capable of altering reality or maybe just tricking the mind, that was a definition too vast to pinpoint what it might be.

Willing to break the silence, the lady forced herself to speak again "I can show you the place."


	2. Say hello to the big bad monster

Making a trip in a serial killer's car was surprisingly reassuring. However, leaving the engine's comfort was in contrast as pleasant as being trapped in a dark little room with an axe murderer. The girl, who had said with a popsicle smirk "Am not going to give my name boys, just call me Cherry" was now not really succeeding in hiding her fear. The death grip she had on the gun borrowed gun made her knuckles go white and gone was her firm expression. Even if it was midday, she was still unnecessarily startled because of the slightest sound, as if she was a little girl afraid of the creaking noises in her house.

Sam stepped closer to her "Thought you'd be accustomed to these kinds of trips."  
Cherry sarcastically snorted, which only made Sam's curiosity grow. "You're no hunter, are you?" he asked, making his voice as soft as possible.

She looked up at him, managing the most strained smile "Bull's eye."  
Their pace was growing slower; they were lagging way behind Dean who had already managed to cross the bridge.

"How come you know about all this stuff then?"

"My dad taught me a few things…" Cherry responded breaking eye contact.

"A hunter?"

She had to suppress the chuckle, if only they knew... on the other hand, yes, he was, but then again, if they knew what she shared her blood with... "You could say he is."

Sam opened his mouth but the words would never roll off his tongue: an almighty force flung him into the metal railing of the bridge, knocking all air from his lungs; black dots erupting in his vision. Cold, abnormally thin fingers pressed against his temples. He wanted to scream, lash out and force the creature to let go, but the fingers seemed to drain every fiber of energy, leaving only numbness, cold, freezing cold, penetrating to what felt like the core of his bones. He heard something, but it was like the sound was stifled by a cotton wall, although even like this the pure distress it carried registered in Sam's mind. He had to help, he had to stay awake, but that was a task as easy as holding water in cupped hands, inevitably it seeped through his fingers.

Cherry stood there frozen in fear as she saw the monster get up, flicker, and reappear crouched besides Sam. It brutally grabbed his head with unnaturally long, nearly blue tinted fingers and she could do nothing but scream, her vocal cords the only thing that she managed to move. It was a scream holding no anger or determination like a soldier's scream would, it was a scream of a girl faced for the first time with the supernatural. It was a scream only fueled by raw piercing fear so bloodcurdling it made the monster turn. It was facing her now.

Her former slack grip on the rock salt-loaded gun was nearly convulsive as she aimed the shimmering figure, trying hard to focus on the paternal voice giving instructions in her head. This was ridiculous, she always had thought she would be better than this, for God's sake she was a –

The gunshot ringing in her ears wasn't hers. Dean ran with gun still smoking, towards his alarmingly pale brother lying limp on the concrete ground and crashed besides him.

"Sam! Wake up!" he growled, ineffectively rousing him. The older brother feverishly checked for a pulse, finding a strong and steady beat, a fraction of the tension in his shoulders left. "Damn it Sammy! Wake up!"  
But he didn't, making Dean repeat his order with fear gradually creeping into his tone, movements becoming clipped, eyes becoming wide, because even after what Sam had done he was still his brother, he still nee—

"Dean." A shaky voice interrupted from behind. His head snapped towards the sound, finally acknowledging Cherry's presence. She was nearly as pale as Sam, shaking ever so slightly. "It isn't dead. We-" she took a deep steadying breath "We should go."

Dean's eyes lingered for several minutes on his comatose brother "Help me put him in the car."

Surprisingly, the thing didn't come back the three stumbled their way to the Impala, which was disturbing, but at this state more than welcomed blessing. Despite the increasing shaking of her limbs, Cherry managed to put Sam into a not-so-awkward position and hurriedly took place besides him, slamming the door shut with too much force as Dean started the engine.

He drove off as fast as he could, occasionally stealing glances towards his little brother. It seemed every time he looked Cherry was checking on Sam, constantly looking for a sign of pulse or steady breathing. _Why did she care so much? She barely knew the kid._

But a different thought came up to him, and that was the one which slipped past his lips. "Why didn't you shoot it?"

Cherry's dark green eyes met his light ones in the mirror and she replied with a flat "I was scared."

 _What the hell._

"I'm sorry," she then added quietly.

"You're not a hunter." It wasn't a question it was a statement waiting confirmation. He could see through her, her face was not yet hardened by pain and fear, it as an open book screaming to be read.

"No."

"But ho-"

Sam jolted up with a sharp gasp, startling the other two and making Dean nearly drive them into the wayside. "Sam?" Dean asked once he had straightened the course of the car again. "Sammy you're with us?" The concerned mind snapped to reality again.

"Y-yeah, I'm here." He put a hand to his head; it was pounding like crazy, as if someone had insisted on banging it on a wall for the whole past hour. Which was actually not as far from reality than he thought.

"You're okay?" Cherry asked before Dean had had the time. Stupid question anyways, Sam had been thrown in a massive iron railing, probably must have hurt like hell considering even stubbing your little toe on the side of a table already was pure agony, and then… well, whatever that creature had done to him happened. So what did she expect but a lie in response?

"I'm fine," came the reply.

"Like it or not, I'm gonna take a look at that thick skull of yours and we're not investigating further t'il I do," Dean said in a voice at least one octave lower than normal.

"Dean, I'm _fine._ Besides, Cherry still has to show us people who could help, and honestly, if I can prevent anyone from having a special swimming lesson a little headache is no bother. At all." It was said with calm yet it was intransigent, leaving no doubt in what should be the course of action. Except maybe that Sam's hands were twitching, but you couldn't really expect Dean to notice Sam's hands in the limited vision field of the car mirror.

Dean knew it, Sam would not change his mind, and they could better use the time spent on trying to convince Sam of resting to do research on whatever ghost had attacked Sammy and the other more… _permanent_ … victims. "Where to?" he finally asked in a huff.

"The main street, left, about the sixth house on the right." Cherry stated activating her phone's flashlight. "Sit still for a sec." was the only warning. She directed the light directly in Sam's eyes before he could flinch away.

"What the-"

"No concussion." Cherry cut in leaving Sam vaguely angrily muttering and rubbing his eyes.

Dean grinned "No concussion."

oOo

She couldn't say the interrogation was a fiasco or that it hadn't gone smoothly… but it hadn't. Mrs. Wilkins hadn't been exactly cool about discovering federal agents at her doorstep. After Cherry gently explained to the hyperventilating lady that these gentlemen were two nice cops who were just here to ask some questions about her husband's death, and not people come to arrest her, she had silently obliged to the demand of letting in. She hadn't even thought of the fact that it was highly unnatural that two agents would be accompanied by such a dubious individual as Cherry, but could you blame the woman?

She finally told her tale… and broke in the middle of it, using Dean as a giant teddy bear, squeezing him half to death. Even if the scene was supposed to be heart-wrenching, Dean's fish on land face lightened Cherry's mood considerably, even making her mask a chuckle with reassuring words.

Broadly speaking, the interrogation hadn't brought anything new under the sun. It was more a confirmation of what had been in the police records, nothing more, nothing less. Same for all the other interviews.

Hurray.

One fact specifically worth noting though: Sam. Not his giant moose size or the fact that his self-esteem was as low as Mount Everest was high; those were standards of Sam's physiognomy and personality. It was more the way his eyes were darting at everything with the slightest movement, more than regularly looking back, body tensed as if ready to run for his dear life.

Cherry had tried to ignore it, really. Dean had attempted to pass it as normal. Sam also struggled to stop his _slightly_ erratic behavior clinging onto the _"it's not real"._

Nice try but no.

Cherry was the first to break the silence, not having the same capacity as the Winchesters to bury all discomfort. She didn't really know if it was a blessing or not. "Sam ?" His concerned face snapped in her direction "What's the matter?"

 _Another wave of detox, isn't it Sammy ?_ Dean thought bitterly. _What are you gonna tell her to not scare the crap out of her?_ Sam opened his mouth to speak only to close it instantly. _Better come up with something quick now Sam._

"Sam?" She was getting scared now.

"I-I'm fine." _Very convincing little stutter Sammy_ "Just, uhm, I think, I'm… I'm gonna head back to the motel. Need a naptime 'cause of the thing from earlier after all." He finished half chuckling.

"Walking?" Cherry asked, very skeptical on the question of if he would make it alive until there.

Dean gave out a sigh "No, I'm driving him 'till there."

She had never seen Sam as resign full looking, head casted down, shoulder slumped, nearly trying to make himself look small despite it being impossible for obvious reasons.

"We still have one person to go to." Cherry quickly interjected "She has refused to talk to me last time, but I know she might be the most useful source we have."

"Why doesn—" Sam tried but Cherry instantly snapped.

"People don't like me at this very moment."

"Listen," Dean cut in "The kid is barely standing on his feet, and that woman of yours can wait 'til tomorrow."

"She sure can, but we can't." Dean raised an eyebrow but didn't interrupt. "Those drownings are pretty regular, aren't they?" She paused, but here again no protests "Approximately every month there is one actually. And surprise! Bath time is scheduled for the next few days. But of course, since you've read the police reports you already knew that."

Dean looked at his brother trembling quasi-imperceptibly in the backseat, crossing gaze for just one moment. He looked so vulnerable. He had his twelve-years-old gaze, as if they were again waiting for their dad to come home as Sam made those damned pleading eyes to have the last bowl of Lucky Charms… like the old times… like the times before all this crap with angels, demons, the apocalypse, demon blood, _Ruby_ … Ruby that slutty son of a bitch. Oh, how Dean had liked seeing life drain out of those pretty chestnut eyes, the little cry of pain when he had twisted the blade in her abdomen, the fact that he had deprived her of her most yearning desire…

"You go interrogate the lady." Sam said snapping Dean out of his reverie despite the low volume of his voice. "I will be fine on my own."

Dean retorted with no emotion "I can't leave you on your own Sam."

It hit Sam hard; _I just don't think I can trust you._ He remained silent, what could he possibly say to that?

"If the woman sees me, she won't even open the door for us." Cherry said out of the blue. "But I can… well… look after Sam while you're gone."

Dean's face hardened even more "No."

Cherry knew she was on dangerous ground and might agitate Dean more, but there was nothing else to try. "Listen. We have no time to waste, Mr. Scary guy is going to invite someone to his pool party and that woman is the only lead we have," Dean tried to angrily cut her off but Cherry talked over him "Look, everyone knows what caused the apocalypse, words travels fast. It's also known how Sam did it. I promise you I know the side effects and can handle any of them." She let the statement settle in. "I don't want any unnecessary deaths that's all."

"You have no idea..." Dean begun in a low, growling tone.

"I DO!" Cherry suddenly shouted giving Sam and Dean a heart attack.

 _Wait what?_

She inhaled deeply "I. Do." Letting out a bitter laugh she added, "You'll have to take my word on it for this one."

The car stopped, the motel was now just a few steps away.

"I'll take your silence as an agreement," she said stepping out and forced Sam to do the same "Good luck."

"If I counted on that I would be long dead already." With that statement, Dean started the engine and drove off.

oOo

During the past hours there had been no sudden weakness, no talking to hallucinations, no seizures, no Sams thrown against the walls. This was good… but not what was supposed to happen. Saying Sam was alright was a severe overstatement; he was still trembling as if he was in Siberia wearing summer clothing, and. His. Eyes. Wouldn't. Stop. Moving. Cherry's guess was confirmed: this attitude was definitely not due to demon blood.

She carefully walked to Sam making sure she always was in his vision field. The scrapping of wood against wood she made as she sat across forced Sam's gaze to immediately lock onto hers. "Let me help."

Sam huffed, it almost looked like he had tried to stifle a laugh, which was contradicting every shaky movement he made "It's in my head, you can't do anything about that." Cherry smiled sadly as she deflected her gaze, letting Sam return to wearily looking around him.

Ironically she could. She could help him. He even could have guessed this if at this precise moment he remembered the other day at the coffee shop, the gold strings-like reflection in her eyes. Those were definitely not caused by a crappy weird neon light.


	3. Ready for a dive ?

**So this chapter is very, very short, but it just seemed like a good end of chapter so I stopped here anyway.**

N°24, here he was then. It was a little house, one of the last in the street, made of wood painted in extremely light blue, with a garden that could have been nice if not for the half wilted flowers and overgrown grass. Dean nonchalantly walked towards the door and pressed the old fashioned doorbell. Not a sound was made, the damn thing must have been broken. He knocked on the door, no response. He waited five minutes. Still nothing. "Ma'am I'm just here to ask you some questions." It was as effective as talking to a fence. This was not normal; Cherry had said the woman always was at home, if she was not responding…

He rammed the door open, gun ready to shoot.

He was met with exactly…nothing. Dean relaxed a little, the chance that something would come and throw itself at him becoming unlikelier with the second. The click of a gun being loaded, quickly followed by cold hard metal being pressed on the back of his head once more demonstrated the accuracy of his deductive skills.

oOo

It was huge, ash black, standing on two feet, razor sharp teeth and claws someone would never want to find their way to their body and it was standing directly behind Cherry. Sam made a spasmodic movement, instinctively reaching for his gun and in a split of a second he was ready to take the thing down.

"Sam?" the faintly shaky voice of Cherry asked. He wasted no time; he unloaded his gun on the creature, sending Cherry hide under the table.

Already tried to kill an elephant with a toothpick? Well if you have, you know exactly how much effect the bullets had on that thing.

The monster was still there and now slowly walking towards him seemingly passing through Cherry's frozen form as she stared at him with mouth gaping. Sam frenetically stumbled backwards searching for more shotgun shells, ramming them into his weapon. As he was about to unload his gun for the second time Cherry grabbed his hands and forcefully bended them down.

"Sam! Listen to me!" But he couldn't, the creature was getting closer and closer, just a few steps away. He tried to break free of Cherry's inhumanly strong grip. "You said it yourself! It's in your HEAD!"

As the last word echoed through his mind he finally looked down at her, twines of yellow now decorated Cherry's green eyes. _What..? How..? From the beginning?_ And that was all the creature needed. It slashed Sam across his chest, making an end to every thought except two: pain and run. He hadn't finished screaming as a surge of adrenaline made him jerk on his feet, free from Cherry's hands.

He ran, he ran as fast as he could, out of the motel, into the car, onto the way. _Have to find Dean have to find Dean have to find Dean._ Sam looked into the engine's mirror and his breath caught: the creature was on all fours, chasing him. He slammed the gas pedal down but as he made sharp turn on sharp turn his panicked brain didn't noticed that nobody was paying attention at the creature: no screams no shocked faces, they were oblivious. It escaped him, like many things did.

As to sanction Sam's neglectfulness the car suddenly made a stuttering sound, wheels stopping just before touching the start of the bridge. "Nonononononononono, god please!" Sam whispered under his breath, but God had never really been a listener of prayers, and it certainly wasn't going to change today. Sam struggled out of the car, cradling his chest with one arm, blood seeping through his fingers. He could never outrun a thing like that… but logic tended to fade away when in panic, leaving only one clear message: get the hell out of here. The outline of the ashen creature appearing on the horizon,sharpened his will to cross the bridge as fast as his injured body let him but as soon as he looked ahead of him hope faltered to nothing. On the other side of the bridge, the eyes of another similar creature stalked every one of his movements.

 _No exists, gonna die here, no help coming, lost already, maybe better this way, deserve it, THINK!_ The railing was the only thing keeping him from crumpling to the ground as the two monstrosities once more approached slowly.

That's where Samuel Winchester, the oh so cherished brother of Dean Winchester, left the building jumping off the bridge into the ice cold stream like three others before him.


	4. Don't use Sam as a test subject

The gun was still loaded, still pointed at Dean's head, but at least he was now seated on a comfortable puffy armchair. Which was an important development _because it was the only goddamn thing that was positive about this whole fucking act._

"Lady, I haven't got all day. So you're gonna say what the hell it is you want, or I'm gonna get going. As simple as that." His lips were pursed, eyes anything but impressed by the gun held in the trembling woman's hands.

"Justmakethemgoaway" Dean raised an eyebrow as the lady's body was wracked by uncontrollable tremors "Makethemgoawaymakethemgoawaymakethemgoaway"

 _Fucking perfect._

Dean carefully stood up and seeing that it didn't seemed to trigger any (violent) reaction he whispered "I can." The lady gazed up with such a pleading and hopeful look Dean caught himself praying he was right "But you have to tell me what you see." She munched her lip, fear evident on her features, still not trusting him. "I'm not with them, I can promise you that," He huffed bitterly.

As stupid as it sound, that seemed to do the trick. "T-they.. S…ss.. say… I-I'm just… that I'm just.. I-imagining it.. That it's- that it's all in… in my h-head…" The gun clattered on the ground as her hands gripped her hair "inmyheadinmyheadinmyheadinmyheadinmyhead"

He gently but firmly grabbed her wrists trying to ground her, "Tell me what you saw, I can help you, I can make them go away" he softly urged.

She pried her eyes open taking a quivering breath, at least she's making conscious efforts to calm down "But I know… I-I knOW they're real…" She slowly stretched her arms towards Dean, rolling up her sleeves, making her palms face up. Her fore- and upper arms were covered in thin lacerations so numerous there wasn't a place which wasn't stained with fresh or dried blood. "They are little but many," the woman spoke with sudden certainty "Ash black creatures, the size of a hand, disproportionately long teeth and claws…" her breathing accelerated again "Nobody sees them.. No-nobody sees th-them b-but m…Mmm..me! Please! Tell me.. t-tell ME! S.. it's r-real! Please!"

Dean looked into her eyes, which sparkling with insanity "It is. All of it is. The nightmare is nearly over. But I need to know when it started; I need to know where the source is."

"B-b-bridge, the…the girl…We j…Jjjust t-talked… And th-then she.. she took m..mm..my h-hand in h-hers…" She stopped again, munching her lip, gaze darting across the room, sounding crazed even to her own ears, but Dean's gaze exempt of disbelief prompted her to go on "Sh-she ssss..smiled, and dis.. disa.. disappeared." She balled her hands into fists "She disappeared."

That's when Cherry decided to text. Dean immediately flipped his phone open. _Sam's gone. Going to the bridge._

oOo

Jess is on the ceiling, flames licking her body, house on fire. It had been on fire before, not the same house, not the same person, but because of the same boy. Because of Sam Winchester, the psychic, the human with demon blood, the boy king, the monster. The one who failed to protect one of his own to be consumed by fear and rage, the one that had let an innocent woman turn into a werewolf, condemning her to die, the one that had willingly sucked in demon blood because of his lust for power, the one responsible for the apocalypse. He had let more people than he could count, over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Finally there they were, all he had failed, cursing him, pleading him, clawing at him, united for one and same cause: destroying the faulty. And he didn't fight them, why would he? They were right.

oOo

He wasn't conscious, that much she, or it, could tell: he was dreaming, and it certainly wasn't pleasant, she would make sure of that. The best part was that she was but partially responsible for it. The man named Sam was already overflowing with soul destroying guilt; which was absolutely fantastic, made her work so much easier really.

Normally it would take days, weeks, or even months before her victim would feel guilty enough for her to be able to manifest her raven-black minions. But with Sam… oh with little Sammy not only could she summon them right away, but they were enormous, she had never the opportunity to summon such giant specimens before. Then again, that was easily explained by her current victim's off the scale culpability lingering at the surface of his thoughts. A twinge of sympathy showed in her eyes, he probably wouldn't even need her help to jump to his death if it wasn't for his brother and his iron will to fix the world he broke.

The human struggled weakly again, eyes remaining closed as his sobs alternated between desperate apologies and slurred nonsense. She noticed he had begun to shiver, and quickly concluded that it was probably the result of the dive in icy waters combined with blood loss. Letting him slip away would mean sacrificing all that precious energy his guilt would provide, and she was already so weak... the creature approached the shuddering body, snapping a linen cloth into existence. She didn't pay attention to the harsh cry the human choked out as she crudely bandaged him, having little interest in spending energy to actually care. Even if the treatment left the man cowering in pain, it would at least stop the bleeding; she hoped.

She wasn't good at this, wasn't good at healing, for the simple fact that her hands were ever meant to do it, and maybe that was a good thing. After all, it wasn't like she wanted her captive to regain full health; an injured man made a better prisoner. She had learnt that over time.

oOo

"YOU SAID YOU'D PROTECT HIM!"

If the thing was anywhere near them, there were now two possibilities: or it had fled, or it prepared for a full force attack.

"He went HAVOC DAMN IT!" Cherry snapped back, instantly breaking her resolve of playing it placid. "THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT!"

Dean was cut short. "They're not supposed to do that?" he repeated in a breath before his tone grew stone cold.

 _Fuck._

"What do you mean _they're not supposed to do that_!?" He brutally gripped Cherry's collar, slightly lifting her from the ground. She struggled fiercely, fear fueling her uncoordinated moves, but he sternly held her in place. "Now you've got to have a damned good explanation for this if you like your windpipe uncrushed," he whispered just over her choking breaths.

"Sam got—" she fought to draw oxygen "targeted. I—"

Dean abruptly released his grip and Cherry instantly fell to the ground, hands gripping her throat as her body shook with harsh coughs. "You what?" Dean asked tone as clipped as could be.

"Sam, he, the things, the headache, the glances over his shoulder, the alarm at noises" Cherry managed, "Those were not caused by a detox of some sort, he was scared, immensely scared of something out there. Felt safer in places where he could see everything, like a room, like the hotel room."

Dean stepped dangerously close, voice heavy with threat "So you're saying that this whole time you knew that my brother was going to end up jumping over a goddamned bridge, and you did strictly nothing to prevent it?"

"I…" that was exactly what she did.

"You'll have to do better than that to convince me," Dean growled.

"The victims, they normally take days, even months before… before "snapping". I thought, I just thought we would have time to make up a plan with Sam to find out what's going on."

"Using my little brother as a lab rat? Come on, is that really supposed to make me leave you unharmed?"

Again a step closer.

Cherry swallowed hard. _Don't mess with the Winchesters, if you hurt one of those crazy bastards, the other one will move heaven and hell just to find you. And believe me, hellhounds are easier to ditch than either of them._ She was already all the way in the mess, trying something could only make her chance of survival go up, or so she thought.

"I'm just trying to get to the thing that caused all this! I tried to find it on my own but there is just no getting it! Without a target it doesn't even manifest! And just when I'm about to think that I can't hunt it down, here you come, the two most tragically famous of hunters, striding into town, and it immediately latches on one of you! It's just a too great opportunity to pass!" She was shaking out of her skin of terror, eyes dilated as a hunted animal, breathing hectic to the point where Dean suspected hyperventilation. "H-How crazy— as crazy as it sounds, I would have given anything, _a-anything_ , for it to be me in place of Sam, but the monster doesn't seem to want me at all! I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. I just want it to stop, all of it, I just…" Cherry abruptly fell silent.

It wasn't her words that made Dean's anger settle, nor was it the utter panic and pleas. He had already tortured the beggars and the terrified; it didn't faze him anymore, even if he was disgusted by his coldness. It was her breathing easing out, her gaze locking to the ground, her posture slid in the perfect embodiment of resignation. She would accept her fate as it came.

"Get up," Dean snapped "You're wasting what little time we have to save him. And believe me, you'd better hope we find him as little harmed as possible. "

She didn't need to be ordered twice. Instantly she jerked to her rather weak feet and followed the lone Winchester to the waiting Impala.


	5. Suicide and rescue mission are synonyms

**Since it's Christmas and it's fun to say: merry Christmas to y'all even though this thing has nothing to do with it at all (okay now you can continue reading what's hopefully still interesting).**

There are three very distinguishable kinds of silences on this earth. The most pleasant is the one created by mutual understanding, where you just enjoy the absence of words; the second is very well known to those who are even a bit awkward socially, the silence provoked by a lull in the conversation where your inner dialogue reverts to _ohgodImustsaysomethingdon'tbeawkward_. The one hanging between Cherry and Dean was neither of these two. It was a thick silence becoming tenser with every second, one of those you could practically touch, making everything feel utterly wrong, emphasizing the malaise instead of soothing it.

This silence lingered until Dean had closed and salted every possible entrance, when he anew made eye contact with -as tensed-up as a bow string- Cherry. "The witness you sent me too, she had a whole collection of scratches on her arms." He stopped, looking for any kind of reaction, but as impatient Cherry was to hear what followed, she kept her mouth pressed into a thin line "Said it was caused by black creatures which appeared after she met a woman... which of course vanished into thin air after touching her hand. Makes anything jump to mind?

Cherry's stiff turndown head movement was interrupted as realization hit her. "Black creatures? I.. before running off Sam tried to shoot what he described as really huge black monsters with long claws and teeth, but I couldn't see them. _Liar._ "And…" She trailed off.

"Do you really wanna test my patience now?"

The response came whispered, barely audible "It slashed him across the torso." _And he saw what I am and sooner or later they will both find out and it will be the end and oh god I should run as far as I can while I'm still able to._ But that was the thing, she couldn't.

Cherry shook again, her breathing caught in her throat but unlike Dean, she didn't seem to notice. "Pull yourself together!" he said harshly, snapping Cherry out of it instantly. "We at least know that it was the same freak for all of them. What we need to know now is what connects all this lovely folks to one another."

She had already done that, try to see what the victims had in common like her father always did when facing a case, but she had found nothing. Even her ability to appropriate the memory of people giving her no lead to follow, but now it was different. She had, thanks to the brothers, gained more substance to work on: she now knew what caused their constant alertness and that the length before what she called the "snap" was way more variable than she had initially anticipated. Maybe she could suck out some information from that…

Dean who had opened Sam's laptop waved Cherry to come sit in his place "Now you're gonna rethread their whole life, step by step if necessary, but find what they have in common." he ordered, the steely edge never leaving his voice.

She began immediately, but only focused her internet research on two persons: Fidel Eldred, the first to jump, and Janel Marasini, the one she had sent Dean to. All the memories of the remaining victims were already seared into her brain, which obviously was much more valuable than any information the internet could provide.

As she dug deeper and deeper into the lives of her two subjects, she finally saw something that eventually could correspond to what she so desperately sought: they had both committed more or less serious crimes during their lives. Fidel had deserted the army when he had just finished his basic military training, and Janel who had rarely been lucky in life, was at one point of her timeline pressed into stealing to survive.

One man's pain is another's gain.

She fumbled in her –no, not hers _their_ —memories without checking if Dean was watching. What had they done? Who or what had they harmed?

An image of a man in his middle twenties in tears, screaming curses and the word cheating over and over again at a young Mrs. Gordon flashed across her mind. Maybe she had to take crime in the large sense? Cherry's vision jumped to a school where she heard the owner of the memory laugh as he swung another one's bag into a pool. If that kid only knew where this sick joke was going to get him one day... The imagery scenery changed again. She was in an abandoned church. Ruby was looking at her, finally revealing her true colors as a never ending flood of guilt and betrayal crushed over her, drowning her, suffocating her. She had meant to do this for a good purpose, she had meant to stop the apocalypse, she had meant to save all that she could, but of course it backfired… it always did, and that's what was killing her… killing Sam…

oOo

This was fun, this was _really_ fun. The deity looked in amazement at what it had created: there in pseudo flesh and blood stood Dean Winchester. And he wasn't just standing, no no no, he was meticulously serving his little brother the beating he deserved.

She had just for the first time in a very long period, been able to personalize a minion that she didn't need to control, just let it do its job. She smiled slightly; the would-be-Dean now punctuated every argument with a certain physical assault, not so extreme it would aggravate the prisoner's health drastically, but it sure was aimed to hurt. Above all things her creature was intelligent! The strength the human provided her was more than impressive at this point.

Despite her euphoria, she thought about stopping her creation, merely out of gratitude, but as she felt the effect of the treatment she resigned immediately. The human's culpability seemed to increase with each hit.

oOo

The sharp intake of breath made Dean look up from the loads of books he was trying to find answer in, and he was damned glad he did; Cherry was riddled with spasms, tears streaming freely down her cheeks, her breath was getting labored and there was again thick crimson blood dripping from her nose. He bolted towards her and gripped her shoulders, shaking her in the process, but it was only when Cherry's name rolled off his tongue that her eyes wildly shot open to reveal big terrified eyes.

Correction: big, terrified, green and yellow-interwoven colored eyes.

Dean instantly recoiled and his vision darted around the room searching for the nearest gun. "Guilt." Cherry breathed out loud and clear, the fear in her features disappearing.

"What do you mean guilt ?" Dean answered back instantly. _Keep her talking, keep her busy._

Cherry turned her head "That's what…" she trailed off again. Dean had a gun pointed at her, one of those with rock salt bullets. Her happiness of finding the information vanished instantly. "…connected the victims." Dean had still not fired, so she decided to go on, she wasn't complete demon, salt wouldn't hurt in the slightest, but the impact... "You see, I think the black creatures and the time you have before going havoc is proportional to the guilt you're feeling. Every one of the victims had something to reproach him- or herself. For example the woman you visited had done lots of stealing for survival. Nothing important, just food and money to survive, but it made her feel guilty nonetheless, but not as much as the other victims because as you have seen she still hasn't jumped. Sam on the other hand…"

"Give me my brother back." Dean interrupted between clenched teethes.

She had been worried to the bone of what would happen to her if Dean ever found out what she was, but now she didn't seem to care at all, she was boiling with pure, white hot rage, Winchesters could be thick, _so fucking thick._ "Think for once in your life you goddamn idiot!" she spat, venom dripping thickly from every of her clipped words. "For one, I can't be at two places at a time. For two, if I wanted your brother so badly, I wouldn't have said that he was missing. For three, WHY WOULD I HAVE ASKED FOR YOUR BLOODY HELP IF I WANTED YOU DEAD!" She took in a shuddering breath as she tried to calm again. "This is exactly why I haven't told you—" she gestured angrily at her eyes, words forming knots in her throat she couldn't get rid of "Against all the fucking common sense of the world you expect me to be the monster even though I've tried to help this whole time for god's sake! You're as stupid as the townspeople holding me responsible for all this crap!"

"What do you want? Why would you help?" Dean fired back not at all impressed by the outburst.

Cherry laughed and it was barely fake, _Jesus Christ_. "Have you ever seen a demon that gets a nosebleed when they use their powers? Because I never have. So what is the conclusion: I'm not a total abomination, just partially. Meaning? I can choose whichever side I want, and my side at the moment is living in god damned peace and quiet with no ghost or whatever it is being able to drown people I care about and fucking up my reputation. Is that good enough? Or do I have to strike a deal to not have a bullet hole between my eyes?"

Dean smiled but it was more a grimace than anything "Do you honestly expect me to believe you?"

"Step aside."

"Make me."

Cherry clutched her short hair in frustration "You have no idea how much I want to. But you know what? I. Can't. You. Moron." Her voice was forced, turned to sound less angered "Let me show practically that I ain't: I'm just gonna step over the salt line that's all."

Cherry waited until Dean was at a distance that she couldn't lash out to him. Only then did she advance towards the salt line he had created by the room door, easily stepping over it. "Happy ?"

The gun didn't even move an inch "Give me one good reason I shouldn't shoot you anyways."

"You're fighting a creature capable of driving you mad just because you feel guilt. I bet you that, if Sam is any indication, your head is overflowing with it. I guess you're just better at hiding it than your brother. Whereas me, I'm just a normal half-demon having nothing more to reproach herself than any other human being." Dean wanted to say something along the lines of "sarcasm isn't going to help you out" but Cherry didn't even give him a chance "Don't get me started over your guardian angel."

Checkmate.

Dean finally lowered with as much reluctance a human could have, promising himself that at the littlest mark of change of heart, he would dispose of her, permanently. Until then he was hooked up with whatever she was supposed to be. He. Was. _hooked up with a half demon. What the holy fuck._

"You had a nose bleed in the café…" Dean almost talked to himself.

"I wanted to know if you two were really who you looked like, and accessed Sam's memory to do so. A touch is enough."

Dean repressed a new flash of hatred "That's how you knew about the apocalypse and Sam's kink for demon blood… Do you ever happen to tell the truth in your life?"

She was about to make a vicious comment but her mind was suddenly struck by one of those rare burst of pure insanity "I know how to get Sam back."

"You should have started with that argument." Dean groaned Cherry ignored the comment and continued

"With my ability I don't just acknowledge people's memories, I live them in first person, with all the emotions that go with it." Dean tried not to think about all the implications that must have carried, "So, I can make myself feel just as much guilt as Sam, and she won't skip the perfect opportunity that I am. Once inside I just dissociate from it, get your brother out, and if I'm lucky we can even find out what the hell that thing is."

This plan was oddly dangerous for her, Dean thought. Why would she put herself at stake for a stranger's life? But the clock was still ticking, and the possibility of finding Sam, and not only his body, was growing slimmer with each passing second. He had neither the time to wait for Castiel to finally answer his prayers, nor the luxury of dismissing the only credible plan at his disposal.

His only hope was truly lay with a woman who, wouldn't even tell them her real name, had lied to them, and violated Sam's private live in the most obvious way possible.

On the other hand, questioning his life choices had never led to anything good. "Let's go."

oOo

Dean had been waiting for about three hours at the spot where Cherry had seen the vanishing tracks; and if it weren't for the clear view on the bridge, he would have sworn Cherry had run off. But now remember kids, as a, for you obscure, French fabulist -poet once said: "patience and the fullness of time do more than force or fury." Indeed, his waning patience was rewarded: Cherry finally jumped over the railing (he couldn't help but admit that it was satisfactory). Once again, he retracted into hiding, feverishly praying that this positively insane plan was going to work.

oOo

Her body was thrown, lurched in every possible way as she fatuously tried to keep the icy water from flooding her starving lungs. Yet still, in this situation where her primal instincts overwhelmed all rational thought, where darkness gradually slipped into her mind, she couldn't help but think that – _he punched his brother square in the face with as much power his trained muscles could provide, sending him crashing into the mirror. Despite that Dean charged at him again, but he was ready; instead of trying to block him, he dodged and launched him into the glass table. He walked towards the brother that had sacrificed his soul in exchange of his life, the brother that always had had his back no matter the odds, and clamped his hands around his throat_ – She deserved it.

oOo

All Dean had done is blinking, he hadn't even taken his eyes of them, _he just blinked and the white dressed lady carrying Cherry were gone_. No trace to follow, nothing that even remotely proved that it had really happened. He screamed out in anger and frustration, lashing out on the nearest oak; he had let this this happen, it was all his fau— NO! He bottled the feelings up immediately. He was not going to give that son of a bitch any reason to lay its claws on him before he knew how to kill the thing. He forced his breathing pattern into a deep and calm rhythm. If he wanted to be useful he had to regain at least a sliver of self-control. So he thought of the one bright thing this situation implied: as much as it pained him to admit it, the fact that Sam probably wasn't alone anymore lightened the perspective the tiniest bit. Waiting here would do no good, so fighting every big brother instinct he had (which honestly, was getting erratic) he started running to the waiting Impala.

oOo

Cherry clenched her eyes shut as she coughed up river water on the ground. Cold, it was so, so cold. It penetrated her skin, crawling its way through muscle to attain the heart of her bones, and she couldn't suppress the chills making her body rattle.

As the coughing fit and spasms lessened, she tried to pry her eyes open, and found the task way more difficult to accomplish than it should have been. Cherry's eyelids fluttered as fast as hummingbird's wings, fighting to stay open despite the excess of clarity, the brightness almost blinding her as if she had been staring directly into the sun. Slowly but surely coming back to her senses, she could feel that the floor was smooth and fresh to the touch, _maybe marble..?_

Her pupils had finally decided to do their job and she allowed her gaze to lazily sweep over the place. From the walls to the bars separating her from what seemed to be a richly decorated ancient Greek styled dinner room, everything was made of pure, white grey veined marble. Cherry would have marveled at the interior décor a lot more if she wasn't in a cell, a magnificent cell though, with bas-reliefs incrusted and gold colored candle holders, but still a cell.

She found out that she could move both hands and feet freely. _Let's keep the good work going._ Painfully, slowly, but with an iron will, she managed to get herself up and look at the back of her prison.

 _Shit._

Cherry ran across the ridiculous large cage. _Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit._

There, in the corner of this absurdly beautiful prison, lay Sam Winchester. Now would it have been _just_ a not-seemingly-dead Sam Winchester, it would have been good news, but in this case she wasn't even sure he was still breathing. He was curled up into himself, dried blood decorating the back of his head, his mistreated flannel shirt, and a portion of the ground around him.

"Sam!" she reached out for his shoulders to turn him over, but as her fingertips made contact Sam, against every physical law, curled-up even more, mumbling something unintelligible. _Always look at the bright side of life: he's alive._ "Sam can you hear me ?" she asked, but he remained motionless except for the twitching in his features. _Fuck the bright side of life._

Cherry forced him to turn on his back ignoring the heavy flinch her touch earned. She could now hear his raspy but regular breathing, and even if you're not supposed to hear it, her inner turmoil quieted a bit at the sound.

She gently began to prod his ribs: everything going as best as it could in a fabulous Greek styled cell after a dive in a river, until the third rib gave in with a sickening crunch. Sam's eyes instantly flew open, breath hitching, wild eyes landing on Cherry, which of course didn't helped with the self-control. He had begun with breathing anew, but in small, frantic whips, and by the look on his face, his broken rib did nothing to make things easier. He propped himself on his elbows and quickly shuffled to the corner as if wanting to sink into it, protecting his face with one arm as the other was wrapped around his ribcage.

"Sam, I'm here to help," Cherry said, almost pleadingly, "Let me see your injuries, I can take away the pain a little if you let me." Sam did nothing but making a quasi-animalistic sound at the back of his throat, halfway between fear, pain, and defiance. Cherry was maybe not his tormenter but he had seen her eyes, those little swirls of yellow meant nothing good. "Sam." Tears were now welling in Cherry's eyes; this time no doubt, she was begging him.

"What a lovely reunion," a joyous voice cut in making Cherry's head snap towards the deity and… _Dean?_  
Seeing Cherry's reaction the goddess laughed with as much cheer as a kid receiving his weight in candies "He really is something isn't he? He's just a perfect copy of the original." She placed her hand under Dean's -not Dean's- chin. "Except that I left as only memory all the time our dear Samuel let his poor brother down, and believe me, even I was surprised at the number of times that actually happened." Sam, who had been still this whole time begun frantically blurting apologies under his breath, making the thing shudder from what seemed like… _pleasure?_ Cherry recoiled, hesitating between being wholly disgusted or utterly terrified.

The goddess opened her eyes again and they shown bright with such malice it seemed she was going to devour Cherry here and now. "But the real question I'm asking myself is how will I be using you, dear?" She eyed the concerned, which was enough for obliging Cherry to swallow back the sarcastic comment. "Obviously you're not feeling half as guilty as I thought you were, and it is not in my character to waste food. So we'll have to find something, shan't we?" and with that the god plunged her being into Cherry's head.


	6. Gods are not the worst, believe me

**Sorry for the late post but I completely forgot so yeah. Here you go anyway.**

The deity stood in an endless hall with doors and honestly was disappointed that it wasn't a library, those always were the clearest model of memories. Her long strides led her a bit deeper into the corridor. Once, she had had a sinner whose perception of memory was portrayed as a giant zoo, where in every cage you could see a memory being played –her gaze slid across the hall, where there was absolutely nothing to differentiate these doors— that had really been the most disturbing experience she had had, and she thanked Zeus for never having putting her in a similar situation again.

Shrugging the thought away, the goddess approached one of the white wooden doors, but as only a few steps separated her from her objective, she was physically halted by a voice, which wasn't exactly difficult to identify. "Get. Out."

Her initial surprise overcome she quickly recovered and moved further, a mischievous grin on her perfect lips, heading straight for the nearest door while the growl of what seemed to be thunder intensified with each of her light steps. Teasing, she reached out as lazily as she could, her porcelain fingers barley grazing the metal door handle. The rumble morphed into a raging full blown thunderstorm, to the point the god could barely hear her own thoughts, but regardless she grabbed the handle fully. Before her mouth could curve into a satisfied smirk, her vision blurred into stripes of colors as she was lurched away from the corridor, away from the doors and what lay behind them.

The scenery became solid again, revealing a heavy breathing and—of course— nose-bleeding Cherry "We are a complicated one aren't we?" she practically purred, eyeing the concerned woman who now seriously questioned if she was going to die from blood loss rather than by the deity's hand.

"Don't worry love, we'll find something, you just wait. And because in the meantime I can't let myself starve…" She snapped her fingers and Dean instantly came to life, his too-heavy footsteps and string of venomous loathing making Sam openly whimper, his short breaths morphing into gasps as he tried to make himself look smaller.

It was only when Dean's foot connected with Sam's abdomen that Cherry understood what was going on. She flung herself between the two brothers, trying to shield Sam from the strikes raining down on his already battered body, but she never felt the impact come. Like the monstrosities from before, Dean's fists just passed through her, hitting Sam regardless. All she could do was hold his jerking body down as his pleas became hectic, gradually transforming into half-choked screams instead of apologies. In this very moment, despite every talent nature had given her, Cherry comprehended what being useless actually meant.

Did it last seconds? Minutes? Cherry wouldn't have been able to tell, but eventually the deity had had her fill of whatever she sought. She snapped her fingers again, and Dean immediately stopped everything he was doing, his face going from enraged to completely lax in nothing more than a blink, obediently following his master out of the chamber.

Sam was on the edge of consciousness, still twitching weakly at irregular intervals in Cherry's arms, and she could summon neither the will nor power to let him go. "It's o-over." She hiccupped "It's over." Sam's eyelids slid shut, and for a moment Cherry thought that his body had given up. She feverishly dug two fingers in his neck, earning a soft strangled cry from the Winchester, and found a pulse. It was not what you could call a normal heartbeat, and it was way too fast to be healthy, but it was a satisfying heartbeat nonetheless.

She leaned back against the wall, repositioning Sam so that at least his head wasn't settled on the floor and couldn't help but try to wipe away the blood on his face, even if what she ended up doing was more smearing it out a bit further. "It's going to be alright," she murmured voice still squashed by a lump in her throat "I'll get you out of here I promise, just need to figure out how."

Despite what had happened she had won on one front; she could cast the goddess from her head with a little time, and that was going to stay that way. So, at least for now, her powers were superior to that of the god, and said like that, it instilled a grim confidence in the hybrids brain.

With renewed urgency, Cherry rummaged her memory convincing herself that she had overseen something important, something useful, that she was not doing this because she had nothing better to do. So, for the hundredth time, she replayed the assaults of all the victims in her mind. Though, yet again, she made the same conclusion: the symptoms appeared just like that, with no apparent reason but guilt. What fucking useful information.

Her gaze fell on Sam's unconscious form again, and she begun passing a shaking hand in his matted hair to swallow down the urge to break her fist against the wall out of frustration. Sam… for him the symptoms appeared only after the blue thing had touched him, and in fact, except for that, it hadn't done anything to him. This had to be the key… this had to be connected somehow, to mean something! But what! Why couldn't she work this out for god's sa— Then an insane theory, an idea that had as much sense as the concept of flat earth, blossomed in her head.

The monster at the bridge was exactly what they had expected to see, and even if it had been more strategic to attack Dean who had been alone, it still went for Sam. Now ghosts were angry and hot-headed, but not that angry and hot-headed. So maybe… maybe the thing holding them captive could take different forms and… hadn't Dean said Janel's little black monsters had appeared after a certain encounter with a girl on the bridge? And honestly, everyone knew everyone here, such were the advantage of living in the arse end of nowhere. If Dean hadn't just forgotten the name of said girl Janel had mentioned, the lady being just another regular woman would be an extremely low blow from whatever ruled this world.

Although she had told herself she wouldn't let her hopes grow big, that was exactly what was happening, and she found herself yet again diving in remembrances that weren't hers. When blood yet again ran down her chin, she was struck with manic joy, a feral smile painted on her normally soft features. All the victims presented the symptoms after a certain encounter with a female stranger, who, of course, conveniently never reappeared again.

For whatever reason the deity hadn't yet touched her, but at least she now knew that it would have to come to that at one point. That's when she could make a move, that's where she could use her gift and get them out. Now the question was how to do that… As to salute Cherry's little victory Sam's eyes cracked open, even if it was but half-mast "I found it Sammy," she softly murmured as she swiped blood form her face, looking at his glassy green orbs, not knowing if he could comprehend her or not. "We're getting there."

oOo

The female human's resistance was seriously getting on her godly nerves. Three days of trying to get in it had been, Three. Whole. Bloody. Days! And she had been thinking that she had retrieved all her strength due to Sam— yeah right. The goddess scoffed bitterly, disgust written all over her face. Even if she had made some progress—she could stay longer and longer in the corridor, even had managed to pry open a few doors— the truth that it would still need her to touch that presumptuous little human finally dawned on her. Of course she could just kill the female, she was an unnecessary mouth to feed, but it had become personal. The deity's pride roared to squish all that unholy arrogance from that girl's thoughts until the last droplets of defiance would spill from her body with the nervous sweat outbreak her sight would provoke. For this occasion, she would learn what the true powers of the goddess wielding the two blades of justice and vengeance was. There would be no exception to Praxidike's judgment, and certainly not for a petulant human.

oOo

Beating, waking up, water, eventually food, sleep, and another round. That had been his routine over the days? Hours? minutes..? How much time had passed since… since what? What happened? Hands were suddenly on him and he stiffened before realizing. Those were the good hands. Those never hurt, they gave him water and bread, they even offered comfort from time to time… He cursed them for taking care of him, cursed them for showing affection for him of all people, and at the same time couldn't help but yearn for them with every fiber of his being as he flirted with consciousness. They meant safety, and reassurance that Dean wouldn't come back. Somewhere in the back of his mind it had registered that something was wrong, that the voice and kicks breaking him apart because of his own damned power carving couldn't be his big brother's, but he didn't seem to be able to connect the dots. What he was aware of was that the good hands were usually followed by other body parts. The hands would gently lay his head on tights somewhere he could feel the steady rise and fall of an abdomen, which meant he wasn't alone, and he couldn't shrug the selfish thought away that he preferred it that way, even if it meant facing yellow eyes at the end of the day.

But right now, he was on the cold hard floor, no bad or good hands, no one at all. He forced his eyes open and found out that, even if it was way more blurry than usual, it was far from catastrophic. He flopped his head to the side, and as expected he saw Cherry. What he didn't expect was that she was on her knees, trembling ever so slightly, and head in between hands of a nearly terrifyingly beautiful woman.

He reacted on instinct and immediately tried to sit up and walk towards the two women, but he didn't even make it past the first stage of his plan. The simple act of using the muscles in his midsection made him connect with the floor in the most brutal of ways, leaving him withering, clutching his stomach and at the same time trying to not put any additional pressure on it. He lay there for a moment, shortening his breath a maximum as freshly flared up agony ripped in his chest with every intake.

 _The woman squirmed under his grasp as efficiently as her weakened body let her, begging him to stop for the sake of her husband that waited at her home as her blood flowed out of her body into the jerry can._

Sam was ripped out of his memory as the good hands crudely yanked him up, intensifying the ache at an almost intolerable level making his knees buckle instantly and a harsh cry erupt from his throat.

oOo

"Please! Work with me!" Cherry lashed out in frustration; desire to escape the place clouding her sense of reality. She readjusted her grip and once again hauled Sam to his feet. This time he seemed to be able to stand, albeit on shaky legs. Even though Cherry supported most of his weight, she was grateful for it.

They really had no time to lose. They probably had something like fifteen minutes, which was the duration of all the carefully selected memories Cherry had implanted in the goddess' brain. And when she found out, Cherry really didn't want to be there; the deity had been far stronger than usual, and she didn't think that she could take a second assault like that.

Cherry walked faster towards what according to the stolen memory was the main entrance door, practically dragging Sam with her as he couldn't keep pace with the ankle Dean had broken.

She didn't spare a look or a thought to the fact that you couldn't see the structure from the outside; she had to get as far away as humanly possible from this place.

"Cherry ?" _Ah_ , so he knew she was, well… who she was. "Won't make it." Sam breathed out, and as if on cue, his legs decided to take a vacation here and then, sending the party to the ground.

Critical hit, nicely played karma.

Sam was out cold, the jolt too much to take in his mangled state. Cherry on the other hand recovered quickly, but was now desperately trying to shake Sam into consciousness again, despair threatening to take over. She couldn't carry this frigging giant, she couldn't make him wake up, she had to get away at all cost. _We_ _have to get away at all cost._

She forced her anguish to translate into something else, something way more useful: pure bad faith based obstinacy.

No stretcher, no rope, time to get creative. She shook her jacket off, tying the two sleeves around Sam's upper body just under his armpits, and started dragging him forward, searching for the nearest road with the Goddess's memory as map.

oOo

 _Washington Street, north. Olive tree stake, coated in victim's blood_ , read the message. Dean didn't believe it. After three whole days of searching in every place around here, interrogating, calling, Cherry just texted her where to pick her up and kill the thing? Despite the fact that he had made sure her phone would stick in her pocket and stay if not dry, at least usable, _trap_ was the first thing his mind jumped to. On the other hand did he really have a choice? What if Sam was there? The knot forming in his stomach made the decision for him.

oOo

Cherry was on the verge of a mental breakdown. One broken ankle, swollen so profusely it seemed the skin might snap at any moment, the re-opened slash decorating his abdomen, three wounded ribs of which one broken, and bruising all over his upper body making it look like deep purple and tarnished yellow was a natural skin tone. It was a miracle Sam had even walked at all. He was scarcely breathing and his face was deformed by a rictus betraying every aspect of what he felt. His eyelids were cracked open but judging by the glassiness of his gaze he wasn't able to see anything. Cherry was so focused on listening to Sam's wheezes that if the impala had been coming she would have heard it from miles away. But of course that wasn't what she heard, what she heard were heavy footsteps and a low growl. What she heard was Sam's punishment having found them. The hybrid pressed her fingers hard against Sam's temples and plunged into his mind, with only one thought.

oOo

Cherry opened her eyes to reveal a dining room lit only by the street lights filtering through half shattered windows, the only sound being a shower running somewhere. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness surrounding her she saw a fine powder on the table and couldn't suppress her curiosity to pass a hand through. The substance was ashen black, and for a moment she was afraid that Sam's "demons" were more literal than she had anticipated. She took in the scent of it and couldn't help a sigh of relief: that wasn't sulfur, it was ash. Wait, ash? Why would there be ash on a kitchen table? She gingerly looked around the room and walked to the nearest wall, letting her fingers skim on the surface of it before exanimating them once more, same result.

So every square inch of this house was covered in ash? Fantastic, we had, a shower working, a burned house— she looked to the kitchen table and groaned— plus a miraculously intact brown bowl with cookies and a little paper. His very his perception of memory was affiliated with the destruction he caused around him, _God…_ this didn't favor what she wanted to do at all.

Despite Cherry's reluctance her feet dragged her towards the chamber where Sam's apple pie life had been abruptly brought to an end, it was her best guess on where to find froze just before her feet hovered over the doorstep.

The chamber, it was filled—more than filled, it was like you couldn't possibly fit anything more—with the spirits of the dead, and they were loud, so really loud with their slight distorted voices Cherry didn't comprehend how she couldn't have heard them. Some were screaming, some were begging, some were making threats, and they all were facing the same way, paying no attention whatsoever to Cherry who just looked in fear at this abhorrent convention. And if that wasn't proof enough that Sam was in that room… Cherry inhaled sharply, blocking her breath and taking a step forward, going through a few ghosts, immediately flashing a memory before her eyes. _The host Meg had been using was bleeding out on the ground using her dying breath to tell the brothers what they wanted to know._ Another step. _A reporter talked about the police center that had exploded; despite all their efforts Lillith had finally taken those lives who had aided the Winchesters._ Now nearly running, Cherry still went forward, blocking the soul destroying memories as best as she could, dissociating as much as possible, focused on one task: find Sam.

And she did. The once so stubborn and so sure of himself Sam Winchester was huddled quiet literarily into a corner of his mind, looking straight ahead, tears drawing patterns on his rosy cheeks as he let them fall in silence. Honestly, Cherry didn't know if she preferred him screaming or lethargic. The boy was protected by the finest strand of salt Cherry had ever seen, sense of logic telling her that if she breathed too hard it meant the end of the line in both senses.

She crouched just in front of him and whispered his name in the most soft of ways, "Sam?" It was one sliver of compassion, just one drop in the ocean of curses, but he heard it. "Sam, I can help, I just need you to concentrate on me." Sam ought to respond but the only thing his vocal chords could manage was a half-constricted moan. "Can you do that for me?"

Still not able to produce any coherent word, he jerkily nodded his head.

Out of habit Cherry sought out physical contact, taking Sam's way too large hands in hers, redirecting the aim of her gift.

"You are way too tragic for your own good Winchester, but after all that seems to run in the family." Sam's eyes were glued to Cherry's and didn't notice the memories she bottled up for him, leaving holes in the army of ghosts infecting the room. "One idiot who never thinks of the lives he saved." The holes were now filled again, but with what seemed like people made of flesh and bone with eyes reflecting gratitude. "Heart too arrogant to see that you had no means to fight what would become." The mass of angry spirits grew smaller by the second as Cherry mustered all the figures Sam held himself from hurting even though he had nothing to do with it, people he couldn't have shoved from harm's way however hard he had tried. "Don't let their survival or passing be for nothing. The world needs saving more than ever Sam, and you're the only one who can lure the devil back to the pit." The shower had stopped, replaced by Cherry's crystal clear voice, the venomous loathing reduced to an omnipresent buzz in the background, too muffled to distinguishing the words. "Don't let them drown you Sam: Dean, Bobby, and every other stupid person on this planet needs you. And if that's not enough, see it as a debt: you've been the start, now it's time for you to ring the end." Cherry dragged Sam up effortlessly, the younger Winchester crashing into her as he offered no resistance whatsoever, and despite her knowing that it would only last a few moments before his demons would resurface, she smiled. "Let's make your safe zone bigger."

oOo

Christopher and Lewis had been friends since childhood and were bonded by the same burning passion: putting bullets into animals flesh to make a good barbecue accompanied by a few beer bottles. More importantly than food, it took Christopher's mind away from lingering on Fidel's abrupt end… and his plans for killing the one the rumors had driven him to believe responsible.

The hunt hadn't fared well from the beginning. There had been as much animals in the traps as in the wild, which was exactly none. So they had decided to go further into the woods because a barbecue without meat is like summer without ice cream: not. Conceivable.

Despite their efforts and skills the hunt remained thin and the two friends begun arguing over the question whether or not a vegetarian meal was real food. Their growing quarrel was nevertheless rapidly truncated by Lewis's hand stopping his friend dead in his tracks.

"D'ya see that?" he asked excitedly crouching on the forest floor looking at the dried spats of blood.

"Our luck must finally have turned," Christopher said with one of those smiles that had become rarer and rarer.

The track was easy enough to follow, yet there were no indications on what it might have been for animal, the layer of leaves too thick to allow any imprints. What could be said despite this was that it was definitely a big boy, a very, very big boy.

"We're headin' to the road… Why would it go to the road?" Lewis mumbled to himself

"If I were injured like that I wouldn't be thinkin' either ya kn—"

But he was cut short, what was lying on the road was no beast. There, stretched on the tarmac, bleeding and completely bashed, laid one of the strangers that had been asking around about the murders going on recently. Hovering over him was that kid that called herself Cherry, the one Lewis had so stubbornly refused to think responsible of the homicides despite all the rumors.

She was looking at them blinking rapidly, swaying a little and Lewis could have sworn he had seen her eyes hesitating between green and yellow. All three people stood there unwavering, the reality of the situation sluggishly settling in their brains.

And then Cherry uttered out possibly the worst and most predictable sentence ever "This is not what it looks li—"

Christopher's 257 Roberts's bullet would have made an instant kill if not for Lewis.

"WHAT THE FUCKING HELL CHRISTOPHER! YOU CAN'T JUST SHOOT PEOPLE LIKE THAT!"

Christopher thrust his friend away without a word, sending him hit the ground hard, not caring for the consequences; that bitch had already killed enough.

Cherry clenched her eyes shut as she heard the metallic click of the firearm being cocked. This was it then, this would be her first and last case and she couldn't help but wonder, what would my parents say? Probably to run, to at least try and save her life, but she knew that in the instant she would move it would be done for, and on top of that she couldn't let Sammy bleed out on the floor like this. So if they were no other exits but a date with a reaper, at least she would face the one ripping her from the living's world.

But what happened was not what she expected. Instead of being met with a blissful nothing, a piercing pain erupted from her shoulder, soon followed by a cry of her own, her clawed hand spasmodically reaching for her injury. She scrambled back as best as she could: Christopher had changed his mind, and maybe she wasn't afraid of death, but pain was another deal.

"The first one was for Mrs. Gordon and the family you scarred," he hissed tone stripped of all emotion as he let Cherry distance him.

Lewis couldn't move, couldn't think, his childhood friend—the one he had shared everything with, the one that had stand up for him when he couldn't— was now pointing a gun barrel at a girl no older than twenty-six. He was aiming to hurt; he was aiming to give that kid an as slow death as possible, absolute pleasure glinting in his eyes as he watched the young woman crawling away in terror. The trigger came in action a third time, lodging a bullet into the girl's thigh, twisting her whimpers into a full on wail imbued by heart wrenching pain and the sense of stinging injustice, making her escape attempt more frantic.

Voice shaking with all-consuming fury, braving Cherry's cries, Christopher yelled "This one s'for that teen that never got to grow up!"

All that made Christopher was gone. The jovial beer-drinking caring lad had been replaced by a cold-hearted, revenge-thirsty murderer blinded by his own suffering, and for the first time in his life, Lewis experienced what true fear was. He realized too late that all the times when Chris had ranted about what he would do if he laid a finger on a sliver of evidence that "that foreign girl" was the killer were no idle talk.

"And this one…" Christopher raised his weapon at the crawling girl for the last time, voice but a twisted whisper "Is for a good guy you're soon goin' to wish you had never laid a finger on."

The now characteristic sound of a gunshot echoed through the air. The bullet soared in a perfect line towards its moving target, and when it finally met flesh it was to deliver the sweet kiss of death.


	7. All you need is a splint of wood

Lewis' anesthetized brain awoke with the dull thump the body made when it unforgivably hit the ground. It sent a single message, but one so old, so embedded in the reptilian brain that he could do nothing but comply; if your best friend is bleeding out dead on the tarmac and the shooter looks at you with murder in his eyes, run. So he did, as fast and as long as physically possible for an nonathletic middle-class white guy with salt-pepper hair, straight into the arms of a murderous deity which wasn't in the mood for any pity.

oOo

Dean closed the distance between him and his brother, laying the blood-soaked stake on the ground to examine him "You okay Cherry?" _heart's functioning if a bit rapid, breathing rasped and chopped but deep._ He noted the heavy flinch and muttering Sam gave as he made skin contact, and his saucer-like eyes staring up at him.

The only response Cherry could manage to croak out was a pitiful "It h-hurts." Tears wouldn't stop falling and she didn't understand why, was it the aftermath of the shock? The pain? Having seen what true seething soul-consuming fury was? Because she was alright, breathing, living, and that was what mattered, right? And without her noticing, the only words she understood at that moment tumbled out of her mouth like one of those broken recorders, stuttered and slurred, slow but with the desire to be quicker, repeated because of a minuscule, unfortunate dent.

"HEY!" Dean's abrupt bark cut through the haze of whatever Cherry was in, and he kneeled besides her looking genuinely concerned. "It's gonna be okay." He took her hand and laid it on her thigh with a gentleness she wouldn't even have dreamt he would be using with her.

"Just press on the wound, I won't forgive you if you die from blood loss before you can tell me exactly what happened," he half-joked, forcing Cherry's eyes to meet his and not the cadaver's. However, despite his best efforts, the whole thing fell kind of flat as he was hurled five meters away by a single, perfect, porcelain arm.

"Hello again sweetheart," the goddess purred turning her gaze away from Dean who was now twisting and whimpering on the ground.

"What did you do?" Cherry asked as her defense mechanism turned terror into hate once more.

"Oh don't you worry, love, he is just paying for his crimes like our little Sammy did. It is just a tiny bit less physical…" At the mention of Sam, Cherry's rancor spiked even more, which didn't go unnoticed by the deity. "I am judgment, love. They get what they deserve, nothing more, nothing less. What did you expect from those boys, honestly?" The slight twitch in Cherry's jaw, her muscles tensing one by one, Praxidike could read her like an open book, and that simple fact made her smile. "Sammy here has been such a good boy just now, that I am at top condition you see." Her grin grew wide revealing a row of perfect, pearly white teeth "And you cannot measure how eager I am to show you, darling."

The goddess's mind shot itself to Cherry's with as much speed and greed as a famished prisoner would on a three-course meal. The sheer force of the assault bashed inside her skull, ricocheting on every surface, cracking her weakened defenses in all places, damaging the barrier Cherry had once so easily maintained.

 _"Still resisting are we?"_

The voice resonated in every corner of Cherry's being, making even her bones rattle with the extraordinary volume alone, narrowing her world to two concepts alone: that booming, insufferable voice, and the feeling of her brain seeming to implode from within.

 _"Not for long anymore is my educated guess."_

The force could have pulverized Cherry's barrier with a single more push, but of course that wouldn't have been fun. Slowly, almost lovingly, the deity wringed her power in the breaches already created, parting them further and further open with agonizing leisure, as if she were unwrapping a piece of antique Chinese porcelain she had been waiting for hundreds of decades. The memories slipped out of the breaches in droplets, dribbling out despite Cherry's barely lucid attempts to maintain them on her side of the dam. The goddess's heartfelt childish laugh echoed through Cherry's mind, and ironically that was what at long last delivered the final blow. Just as a plastic bottle explodes when the liquid in it freezes, Cherry's defenses imploded all together, and as the shards of the barrier fell, so did the half-human's consciousness.

oOo

It sounded like a firecracker, but as if heard from the other side of a two meter broad wool façade. The younger Winchester knew the sound was familiar, and it being neither the Fourth of July nor night, the chances of it being an actual firecracker were frankly brushing the probability of zero percent. Straining his numbed senses he heard something else, a scream perhaps, and his inability to pinpoint what it was fueled his will to try to open his ridiculously heavy eyes.

Another explosion, louder, followed by yet another scream, and for some reason unknown by even himself, the feeling that it was his duty to come to aid grew stronger.

Third blow, third cry. Sam could now perceive pained, hiccupped moans and a voice that was likely the one of the men holding the gun.

"And this one… is for a good guy you're soon goin' to wish you had never laid a finger on."

Fourth gunshot.

Sam's eyes flew open, and for a moment the only sounds that was heard was the one of a body falling to the ground. Then the quiet whimpering started anew, and this time he finally managed to place it: Cherry.

Sam forced his head to turn towards her, praying with all that he had that the red coloring her shirt and leg wasn't hers. He wanted to run towards her, to run and offer the comfort she had once provided him, but his body had as much strength as a turtle on morphine. He attempted to say Cherry's name as last resort, but his voice proved as cooperative as his body, his weakened state transforming the cry into a hardly audible choked gurgle. Fate didn't let Sam time enough to curse himself for his uselessness as a pair of familiar hands rolled his head. His breathing quickened instantly; the bad hands had followed him, Dean had followed him. The pain of his bruises and damaged bones seemed to flare at the contact, making him flinch uncontrollably as his eyes were glued to the familiar green orbs. He tried to voice his pitiful excuses and pleads, anything to avoid the hits that Sam knew would soon follow, but again his vocal chords failed him.

"You're okay, Cherry?"

Sam was growing desperate for his body to cooperate, to squirm away from the hands, to escape another bruise to add to his collection.

"It h-hurts." The bad hands stopped prodding.

"Ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts—"

Dean's voice gave out a sharp bark, making Cherry's frantic mantra and the hands disappear immediately. From there on Sam lost himself in the concentration of getting his erratic breathing under control and trying to move, getting only snatches of the conversation at hand. He found that he could move his right leg without much of a problem, so he confidently tried to reproduce the same movement with his left one. Big, big mistake. A jolt of pure white hot pain shot through his leg and the next moment he was shouting out at the top of his lungs. The thing was though, that he wasn't the only one.

The screech would have made any human flee and shattered windows if there were any. Sam's hands flew to his ears to try and cover the sound erupting from Cherry's throat as she dropped on the floor, convulsing as though overflown by electricity. The minutes that passed had the consistency of hours, as if the lord of time itself had stopped for the good pleasure of that abomination torturing the girl with the mangled blood, but finally it stopped.

The deafening silence that followed was what granted him the willpower to make his body comply. He rolled himself on his injured stomach, gasping face against tarmac as he waited for the pain ripples to subside. His hand brushed against the wooden stake, and he shuddered at the thought of what Dean had planned for him when he came. Dismissing the image he firmly grasped it. Even if it meant nothing to the creature, it was the only thing he had close by hand. Sam forced his trembling arms to take most of his weight as he finally dragged his legs beneath him, careful to avoid moving his broken ankle.

Now resting on hands and knees, already heaving heavily from the hell he was putting his battered body through, he crawled. He crawled despite it tearing on his wound, despite his ankle which felt like somebody had replaced his bones with shards of glass, despite Cherry being most probably already dead.

 _Move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg, move one hand, then one leg—_

Sam's lungs were on fire, breathing erratic as he fought to do anything but choke on the wisps of air he managed to inhale, muscles begging for relief, body crying to give up.

A moan reached his damaged sense of hearing, low and deep, as if Cherry hadn't the force to put up a fight but still ineffectively wasting her last shreds of power in it.

Sam surged to his feet, ankle screaming like never before yet not giving in, blood seeping again from his chest wound, convulsive grip on the blood soaked stake. Not able to hold himself upright for more than mere seconds, he threw his whole body weight into the raging thrust, putting way more than power in it. The point of the wood shoved into the ivory flesh as easily as in butter, tearing muscle with ease, spilling blood over the snow white of the goddess tunic.

The two bodies were claimed by gravity as equals, hitting the ground as hard as one another. One was reaped before it hit the ground, the other was swallowed whole by darkness.

Silence fell on Washington Street like it does in a cemetery after a burial, the only sound being the Chirps of birds and the wind in the trees… and the unbreakable Dean Winchester waking up with a gurgled intake of air.


	8. Strangely, it doesn't end in a graveyard

**Well, this is the end for the ride (for now at least) so I hope it wasn't too much of a catastrophe and (obviously) that you enjoyed it. In any case, thank you for reading!**

The notion of how excruciating a migraine could be was reaching new levels for Cherry. She groaned— first mistake. It resonated in her skull as if she had screamed through a megaphone while being in a tunnel, each new echo feeling like someone gradually weakingly smashed a hammer in her occiput.

"You're okay back there?" Dean questioned from behind the wheel.

They were in the impala Cherry finally noticed. Through her black dots polluted vision she could discern Dean's eyes staring quizzically at her from the car mirror. Oh, he had asked a question then… what was it again..?

"What?" Cherry slurred as softly as she could manage, hoping it would be sufficient to keep the hammer from striking again.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like my brain is trying to break out of my skull while being hundred feet under water."

"Well, if you can still say that I'm sure you're not as bad as you look."

Cherry observed the statement for a while, only half comprehending it as she fought the vague of sudden nausea.

"If you're gonna be sick just say so will you, I can't forgive someone messing with my baby."

Again it took her second, but she finally begun to chuckle lightly. Second mistake. Her vision was going double from the point at this point. "Wh-where are we going agh... again…?"

Dean's expression darkened and he abruptly averted his eyes "Hospital, the two of you need it."

"Two…?" What was this about..? He would never worry for her at this point and …where was Sam? It was only now that she realized he wasn't in the shotgun. Fear pierced through the veil of pain, and she begun to turn her head as best as she could, looking for the Winchester she knew as much as herself.

It took her a ridiculous time to find out, but finally she saw him: slumped on the car door opposite of hers lied the damaged form of Sam Winchester. With her painfully sharpened hearing she could hear the shallow wheezing occasionally interrupted by brief dry coughs coming from him. _Gods..._ what had she done? _Well,_ an annoying high-pitched voice summarized for her _lets see. You couldn't wait to lay your fingers on the monster so you offered little Sammy here on a golden plate, you let him be beaten by his brother on many occasions resulting in multiple broken bones plus he was imprisoned in his own hellish nightmare. Yeah, that's about it._

In a sense, the Winchesters' and Cherry's philosophy were similar as two water drops were: you don't make mistakes but if you do, you fix them, or die trying (although even now she sincerely hoped it wouldn't have to go to such extends).

"Please…"

Dean's eyes found the mirror again.

"Please don't-don't leave me here…"

Maybe it was because Cherry had put her life on the line to save his brother, or maybe it was the fact that an extra mojo capable ally to fight the apocalypse was always welcome, or that he knew that she would end up behind bars if she stayed here… but he had agreed to Cherry's request before the last word could roll off her tongue.

"Can't abandon you just yet, staying here is suicide and you still have to tell me what happened." But Cherry never got to hear that, the banging in her head had finally dragged her down.

oOo

They had to go. They really had to go. The only thing that made that the three of them weren't already incarcerated was that they were still recovering. Dean, the least wounded of the trio, was just simulating at this point, being sluggish and not properly responding to stimuli just to escape the interrogation. Cherry on the other wasn't in need to fake it. Sure she would recover, but she had it mightily difficult to keep her emotions and balance in check, and everything seemed dimmed or "foggy" as she would describe it. Honestly, it didn't help with her mood changes, but hey, at least she was healing quickly. Sam... well Sam had surly been doing better than the last time he woke up completely terrified. For once Dean's presence wasn't able to soothe him, to the point where Cherry had had to assure him he was safe.

For some reason, his little brother had believed her without question and had tried to get his erratic breathing under control even though he still mumbled excuses every now and then. It had taken many reiterations of "It's him this time, it's Dean, I promise" and the choked "I forgive you" from the latter to give the kid a semblance of trust, and Cherry marveled at the capacity of Sam to recover so quickly. Being convinced that Dean was really his brother seemed to work like a magic cure, and that was exactly what they needed right at the moment.

Now, the three yet again stumbled towards the trusted 1967 Chevy impala and for one god given ride everything was back to normal: Dean in the driver's seat with too loud music, Sam as shotgun, and duffel bags in the trunk. From the backseat Cherry looked at the two Winchesters, thinking about how long her own bag was going to rest with the brothers. A soft smile played on her lips at the thought of meeting Bobby; at least this time she wouldn't be the only one to do the explaining.


End file.
